There are so many small-name brands of video cards; which brands make good cards and which should be avoided?

In 2004 I bought a connect3d brand video card from tigerdirect.com and had an experience less than ideal. Do you always get what you pay for with these budget cards, or are some brands good while others lacking? Which would you recommend? Is it worth the extra money (possibly twice as much) to get the name-brand... show more In 2004 I bought a connect3d brand video card from tigerdirect.com and had an experience less than ideal. Do you always get what you pay for with these budget cards, or are some brands good while others lacking? Which would you recommend? Is it worth the extra money (possibly twice as much) to get the name-brand card? Or are cards from companies like HIS, Powercolor, and Sapphire just as good?

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Best Answer: There are plenty of good brands and plenty of bad brands. For Nvidia cards good brands include but are not limited to:

BFG Tech, eVGA, Leadtek, Gigabyte, MSI, XFX

I don't have as much experience with ATI cards but to my knowledge the brands that you mentioned, HIS, Powercolor, and Sapphire, ARE good brands for ATI cards. ATI also brands cards itself which are considered to be high quality.

Some brands to avoid would be: Chaintech, Rosewill, Jetway, Biostar, and ESPECIALLY PNY they are a horribly dishonest company and do not honor warranties.

As the poster above me mentioned, www.newegg.com is the best place to buy computer parts. Their prices are far better than anything you'll see at a retail store.

Some of those companies you mentioned above are pretty good. As long as the company is actually using the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) from a large company like ATI or NVIDIA then youll be fine. All these companies do is use the same GPU, but put a slightly different board and heat sink on the card. If it helps im using a Sapphire card right now and I love it. If you are looking for a card try: http://www.newegg.com they have great prices.

Budget cards are low performance. Expect to shell out some money for higher performance cards. Connect3d, HIS, Powercolor, and Sapphire are partners with ATI. Jaton, BFG, eVGA are nVidia partners for Add-In Cards. Good cards run $200 and more.

They're all pretty much the same quality and close in price, provided you're comparing identical chipsets. Add-in board manufactures offer basically the same product, which is the nature of the business. ATI or NVidia makes the chips and the reference boards, then the AIBs build them, slap their brand on them, and ship them out. In order to differentiate their products, they do things like pre-overclock the chips, or use custom cooling fans, or offer longer warranties, or give you a free T-Shirt or a PC game.

Basically, decide on the graphics card that you want, then compare the offerings from the AIBs and pick one.

If there is a 2x difference in price, you are not comparing identical video cards. Video card naming can be confusing.

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